It was meant to be a battle of pace in Lucknow on Wednesday. Mohammed Shami, Mohsin Khan and Prince Yadav led the charge for Lucknow Super Giants. They still had Mayank Yadav, the 150-plus wunderkind, and Naman Tiwari, a 20-year-old who can touch 145 kph, on the bench.
Delhi Capitals were not short on speed either. Lungi Ngidi, Mukesh Kumar and T Natarajan formed their core, while J&K sensation and Ranji Trophy winner Auqib Nabi waited in the wings.
The red-soil pitch at the Ekana Stadium was the perfect stage. The ball moved in the air and off the seam, making batting a grind. It would only get tougher in the second innings when LSG unleashed raw pace.
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But that is not what we are here for.
We are here for a slower ball. A Lungi Ngidi slower ball, one that is beginning to carry the same inevitability as Jasprit Bumrah’s.
Ngidi, like Bumrah, wears a smile that wins you over. His slower ball does the opposite. It deceives. It embarrasses.
THE SLOWER ONE TO POORAN
On Wednesday, Nicholas Pooran, one of the finest T20 batters in the game, was at the striker’s end. Ngidi was into his second over, having conceded 10 in his first. Axar Patel brought him back despite T Natarajan striking in the previous over, removing Ayush Badoni.
There was a clear plan: Ngidi to Pooran.
LSG were 57 for 3 at the end of the eighth over, having already lost Rishabh Pant, sent up to open, Aiden Markram and Badoni. If Pooran stayed for five overs, the early momentum would slip. Axar knew it.
So Ngidi came back.
He was hit for six by Mitchell Marsh off the third ball. He did not react. Marsh took a single the next ball.
Pooran was on strike.
The slower ball came. It almost felt like it never did.
Ngidi’s arm came through at full pace. His fingers worked from behind the ball. The speed gun registered 112.3 kph, more than 25 kph slower than his stock delivery. Pooran appeared to have read the change of pace. He was waiting for it.
But as the ball travelled, it hit an invisible wall. It dipped sharply at the last moment. Pooran’s weight went forward too early, his bat was stuck in front, and he was left tangled as the ball slipped through the gap between bat and pad to shatter the stumps.
Ngidi smiled again.
Watch the video here:
Pooran was gone for 8. LSG huffed their way to 141 in 18.4 overs. Ngidi finished with three wickets, including another slower ball that dipped at yorker length to dismiss Mohsin Khan.
Delhi would recover from a top-order wobble to chase the target in 17.1 overs, powered by Sameer Rizvi. But that is another story.
This one belongs to that slower ball.
It is not new. Everyone now knows Ngidi will bowl it. Seven of his 24 deliveries were slower balls. He bowled a similar one to Abdul Samad in his next over. Samad survived. Pooran did not.
That is the thing with this delivery. Knowing it is coming does not help.
LIKE BUMRAH’S YORKERS
Ngidi’s slower balls are inching towards the status of Bumrah’s yorkers. You expect them. You still cannot deal with them.
During the T20 World Cup, Ngidi leaned heavily on the variation. Five of his 12 wickets came off slower balls. He conceded at 7.19, second only to Bumrah among the leading bowlers.
Bumrah, too, has a formidable slower ball. His hyperextension gives batters very little time to pick length or pace, making even his conventional off-cutters more effective than most.
Ngidi’s method is different.
It carries shades of Dwayne Bravo, one of the masters of the art, who relied less on grip off the surface and more on dip through the air.
It is no coincidence. Ngidi learnt the craft from Bravo during his stint with Chennai Super Kings in 2018. What we see now is the result of years of repetition.
“I had mentioned that he was the one who told me I had a good deceptive slower ball. And then I asked him, ‘how?’. He was willing to teach me. So, what you are seeing right now is years of practice. It just didn’t happen overnight, but I have been able to try it,” Ngidi told the broadcasters after the wicket.
“I am still not 100 percent yet. But it’s pretty close to there. I am trying to emulate what he used to do, and it’s working,” he said.
SO, WHAT’S THE NGIDI SLOWER BALL?
Think of holding a wet, slippery bar of soap. If you want to throw it across the room at full speed, you grip it firmly in your palm and snap your wrist through.
But what if you want to throw that same bar so it barely travels a few feet, while your arm still moves at full pace? You do not slow your arm down. You change how the bar leaves your hand. You squeeze it with your fingertips, from behind, so it slips out with far less force than your arm suggests.
That, in essence, is what Lungi Ngidi is doing with a cricket ball.
The Ngidi slower ball is a subtle evolution of the traditional off-cutter. Conventionally, an off-cutter is bowled by rolling the fingers over the top of the ball, like turning a doorknob, creating friction and deviation off the surface.
But as Eric Simons, who worked closely with Ngidi and studied Dwayne Bravo frame by frame, noted in The Indian Express, there is a crucial difference. In Ngidi’s version, the doorknob is vertical. His fingers do not roll over the top. They move around the back of the ball.
Former India fast bowler Irfan Pathan broke it down on air on Wednesday.
That small adjustment changes everything.
With his fingers positioned behind the seam, Ngidi can maintain full arm speed, offering the batter no visual cue, no slowing of the shoulder, nothing to hint at what is coming. The ball is squeezed out with the fingertips at the last instant.
The result is a dramatic drop in pace, often 25 to 30 kmph slower than his stock delivery, but more importantly, a change in how the ball behaves in the air. It does not merely slow down. It dips.
That late dip is what undid Pooran.
Dale Steyn, watching closely, summed it up best.
“I think Nikki just fell over. He may have even seen it and got into position early. I don’t know whether his bat got stuck, but his whole weight fell over. But to be honest with you, a lot of batters don’t see that ball from Ngidi, even though you know it’s coming. It’s so difficult to pick out of his hand. It’s so late. And Nikki P should consider himself one of the many guys foxed by him,” he told ESPN.
Because the ball is released from behind rather than rolled across, it holds its line for longer before gravity and those vertical revolutions take over at the very last instant. To the batter, it appears like a full delivery that suddenly dips beneath the bat just as the shot is being completed.
SKILL + GAME AWARENESS
Ngidi broke onto the scene as a tall, hit-the-deck fast bowler for South Africa, built for Test cricket. Over time, he has evolved into a far more rounded T20 operator.
It is not just skill that separates him. It is awareness, the kind you see in Bumrah.
On Wednesday, that awareness was evident. Early in the innings, he had a brief conversation with wicketkeeper KL Rahul and realised that slower balls bowled on a good length were not gripping enough. The adjustment was immediate. He went fuller, looking to create dip just below the batter’s eyeline rather than rely on the surface.
“I tried to use the bigger side. We know what type of a ball-striker he is. So, giving him no pace to work with, trying to do it in the air, I guess, was the idea. It wasn’t really turning off the surface, so I tried to get the revs and create the dip.
“Chatting with KL to see what’s going to happen off the wicket if I change pace. I saw there was not much help on a length, so I was trying to do them in the air,” he said.
And then came the twist.
His favourite ball of the night was not the one to Pooran.
It was the wide, yorker-length slower ball to Mohsin Khan. The hardest variation to execute. The one he has worked on the most.
It is the ultimate T20 contradiction: a friendly smile followed by a delivery of cold, calculated cruelty. Batters, take note. That Lungi slower ball, the one that feels like it might never arrive, is coming for you.
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